Blogging law professors consider their options after web host shutdown; at least one is calling it quits
The end-of-the-month shutdown of web hosting platform Typepad has blogging law professors scrambling to find a replacement or considering whether to shut down.
At least one legal educator has already made the decision to retire from blogging. He is Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law dean Paul Caron, co-founder of the Law Professor Blogs Network, which is closing with Typepad’s demise.
In a Sept. 8 post, Caron said the TaxProf Blog is shutting down on Sept. 30 after 21 years online. “At this stage in my life, I am not interested in starting anew on a different platform,” Caron writes. “I hope to find another home for the massive content of my 55,780 TaxProf Blog posts.”
Caron informed members of the Law Professors Blog Network about the shutdown this week. He offered a tech support engineer to help transitioning to LexBlog, which has offered to host the law blogs.
“It has been an honor to serve as your ‘Blog Emperor’ through this remarkable chapter in self-publishing, the evolution of the internet, and legal education in America,” Caron wrote in his notice to members. “Thanks for your partnership all these years.”
Writing about Caron’s decision at the Volokh Conspiracy, South Texas College of Law in Houston professor Josh Blackman said that blogging “can be a thankless and burdensome task.”
“We don’t earn any actual income for doing it,” Blackman wrote, “and receive countless attacks” from people who never publish anything. “Indeed, social media for better or worse, has supplanted much of what made the legal blogosphere so important,” he wrote.
Many legal blogs are grappling with the shutdown. The Legal Profession Blog will “no longer exist” after 19 years of posts and more than 6.3 million views, wrote Georgetown University Law Center professor Michael S. Frisch in a blog post. Frisch told the ABA Journal he may be interested in transitioning to a new platform but he’s not sure if it will happen.
Immigration Prof Blog posted that its “blog team is figuring out how to proceed and will let you all know whatever is decided.” Mirror of Justice is hoping to move its 21 years of content elsewhere. White Collar Crime Prof Blog author Ellen Podgor of Stetson Law said she is pondering whether to move to a new site or move to a new project.
Blogs planning to move to a new web host include the Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports and CrimProf Blog.
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